Business-level Marketing Planning
Marketing is one of the three functions of any business. To make something meaningful happen, here’s what you need to know.
When you determine that you need to change something in your business, you need a plan. Marketing may be the focus of a change you want or support a goal in another area of your business. Use the section headings and insights here to guide your planning. Identifying resources needed to contribute to each task is definitely something to know, as is being creative in finding ways to get resources you don’t already have.
Understanding marketing starts with foundational knowledge. While your business is unique, the basics are universal. You don’t need an MBA for this.
What are your goals?
Do you want to increase sales immediately? How about developing increased brand recognition? Maybe you need to improve your pool of prospective employees. Whatever you choose, make it very explicit.
This is how you frame the campaign you are going to undertake. It lets everyone contributing efforts to the campaign to know the big picture. Explicitly sharing your goal is also a great motivator.
Humans are always comparing ourselves to others, and telling others a goal makes you accountable. Be sure to put a quantity to your goal. You should include something like “increase the number of new customers this year by eight,” or “reduce the number of days it takes to fill a position by a week before October.” You’ll need to know the relevant metrics from your business to set a meaningful goal.
It should be easy to find metrics about your website, emails, tradeshow results, orders, business processes, and revenue. There are free online tools that can tell you about competitors’ keywords and web traffic. If your business doesn’t have much historical marketing data, look on-line for relevant industry guidance.
Another aspect of goal statements is a timeline. This tells people when you are going to deliver the goal you have. A deadline is important because you not only start your campaign planning backward from this date, but you also will know better when an important business improvement should be in place.
Additionally, deadlines frame the level of urgency. A short time to plan and execute signals a more urgent goal. Longer time horizons can mean a slower pace. Be aware of the scope and meaning of a goal you set.
Measure progress
You’ll want one to three metrics to keep track of progress. Having checkpoints for a marketing campaign can help you to focus on aspects that may need adjustment. Knowing these numbers as they are now and as you want them to be will help you set expectations for the results you want to see. The gulf between present and future helps you to understand the scale of the effort, set a deadline to reach the goal, and the budget for cash outlays. Knowing what customer behavior drives the metrics you want to improve gives you insights into messaging, images, and sales readiness definition.
For instance, say a milestone in a campaign is an industry event. Key metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for these is the number of leads and sales revenue that result. Marketing goals for industry events typically include increases in these measures or an increase in the ROI for a given event. Another could be an average transaction size.
Remember I mentioned marketing in support of other business goals? Here’s an example. Metrics from your accounting system can tell you about ratios like book-to-bill, days sales outstanding, inventory turns, and returns. Marketing can help improve these. Use these kinds of metrics to let marketing know what improvements you need. Together you can figure out the relevant marketing metrics for the campaign or program.
Be clear about the links between marketing and other business operations. Once you do, the metrics you want to improve will surface and be something everyone can understand. Imagine you identify that your company’s book-to-bill ratio is below normal for your industry. Your strategy for improving this metric may mean speeding up production and shipments. Your related marketing goal is then to “increase leads who would place an order sooner in the buying cycle by 18% in six months.” Now you know what you want, marketing knows what to work towards and everyone knows the what, when, and why.
Between goals and resourcing
You’ve got a goal. You know what to measure. Strategy is the ‘how’ part of goal setting. This is best based on a thorough understanding of your market and your business. Where this is an important difference-maker, a strategy should be creative. By creative I mean the goal gets considerations in light of other dimensions of your business, particularly operationally and strategically.
Whatever your goal, you need to explain how the goal is going to be accomplished. People also like to know the reason a goal is established, so I recommend the discussion with your team starts with an explanation of the motivation driving the goal.
There are certainly different strategies you can consider. Armed with insights about your company’s capabilities, including the abilities of yourself and your team, you can evaluate the likelihood of the success of one strategy or another.
Another consideration for strategy selection is the opportunity cost, AKA trade-off. Trade-offs can come in two forms- what you will have to defer or quit doing, and other things you could be doing. Be sure any trade-off you make is less valuable than the new goal, or can be set aside or reduced while working on a new goal.
The selection of your strategy has to factor these. This is where your business instinct is invaluable. Confirm your thinking by asking yourself a couple of questions regarding priorities and trade-offs. I recommend you ask is there an opportunity for this initiative to also benefit another aspect of your marketing, like emphasizing a brand pillar? Secondly, ask if there is an opportunity to improve an internal business process. Your team can provide insights into these questions, too.
What resources do you need?
With a clear goal, a deadline, and strategy, start making plans. Planning with the end in mind is central to success. Start at the end and see all that has to be in place to make the goal. You can list under each milestone of your campaign the resources required to make that milestone real. Add dates for completion of each milestone and note dependencies, too.
Who will do the work you need for each milestone? Will you need money to pay for outside help, software, sales material or something else? Map the milestones of your marketing campaign in terms of when each will need to be reached, any technical support, creative work, etc., and who will do each task.
With the resulting document, you’ll be able to communicate much more effectively about the goal and people’s roles. Get feedback to ensure you keep other business priorities understood and accounted for. Talking with your team will also remind you of constraints like existing commitments and vacations that could impact the timing of task completion.
Fill in the blanks
Given your goals, strategy, and resources, what else do you need? For example, is there expertise you need to reach your goal? This is where creativity and prioritization help you make decisions.
Define exactly what you need and when you need it. An important bit of technical expertise might be out of reach, cost-wise, in the near term. Is this work a nice-to-have capability, or critical to reaching the goal? Maybe it can be done later. You may be able to execute the remainder of the campaign or initiative and use money from new sales it generates to pay for this expertise later. Get advice from the tech resource now and plan the work in the best way for the tech work later.
Partnerships may be another approach to getting needed resources now. Some suppliers and distributors offer co-marketing or market-development funds. A vendor you already work with may allow you to shift a function to them, freeing up some cash or someone’s time for the new work. There may be a component supplier that would allow you to extend payments somewhat, temporarily freeing cash for this initiative. This might work if they feel confident you will increase your orders to them as a result of the campaign. You may be able to accelerate collections on existing sales, maybe by offering an additional half a percent discount for speedy pay on outstanding debts. Look around for ideas to free cash for this initiative. You will then be more confident all the needed resources are covered and when.
Know Your Business
You know your business’s numbers. What I mean here is be able to say, clearly and concisely, what business you are in and, most important on this topic, what makes your company different. Be able to say what customer problem you solve and the experience your customers get only with you. You need to develop a list of points that will be meaningful to your customers, so you need to know your customers. As I wrote above, you need to know your team members, too.
With a well thought out elevator pitch for your goal, you will be more easily understood. This helps to get personal buy-in from contributors and keep your marketing efforts focused and coherent.
If you haven’t lately, ask your customers why they buy from you and not your competitors. It doesn’t matter what you think your differences are, it only matters what your customers tell you they are.
Ask regularly. If you have different kinds of customers or markets related to this goal, ask some in each category. This is very important to bring clarity to the kinds of problems your company solves for your customers. Be sure your team gets a copy of your notes on these customer discussions, too.
This information will help you to make clear the messages you want your customers and prospective customers to receive. Marketing can use this direction to deliver effective results faster. This can be an important part of the planning for this goal. It will help you to see other changes you want to make, too.
Lastly, have a contingency plan. What if some aspect isn’t completed on time, costs are higher, or the results are not what you need? You may be able to salvage some of the work. Conduct A/B testing whenever it makes sense. Be ready to not only make adjustments to the plan but also quickly refocus on other work that may have been put aside to make room for this initiative. Likewise, be ready for more success than you anticipated. Can you get more components and labor in time to ship additional orders?
To plan your small business marketing requires some foundational information. Be sure you know what your goals for marketing are, in the time frame you set. Look for opportunities to leverage an initiative for additional value. Remember to spend time actively asking and thinking about what makes your business special. And of course, take stock of resources you may have- not just funds, but relationships, university extensions, industry groups, know-how, staff, and suppliers. Consider what they might be able to contribute.
